EA planning microtransactions for "all of our games"

Here is a statement that an EA executive has made about microtransactions, presumably without winking, smirking or collapsing onto the floor in a fit of hysterics: "Consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."

Before I ride off on a custom-built jetpack fuelled by the internet's indignation, here are the details. The executive in question was Blake Jorgensen, EA's CFO. He was speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, transcribed by Seeking Alpha , and revealing EA's plan to build microtransactions into all of their games.

"The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games," Jorgensen said. "And so to the extent that ... we're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."

Microtransactions aren't exactly new territory for EA, what with Mass Effect 3's equipment box gamble and Dead Space 3's easily exploitable single-player scrap dealership. What's more, as a thing said by an executive, there's no guarantee this will have any real affect on the reality of EA's future releases.

Still, whatever happens, I can't imagine this commitment to additional real-money purchases is going to prove massively popular. Although logic would dictate that EA wouldn't be so interested if people weren't consistently buying them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phil has been PC gaming since the '90s, when RPGs had dice rolls and open world adventures were weird and French. Now he's the deputy editor of PC Gamer; commissioning features, filling magazine pages, and knowing where the apostrophe goes in '90s. He plays Scout in TF2, and isn't even ashamed.